


The Three Orbs

by Mallamun



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mallamun/pseuds/Mallamun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Morpheus goes missing, a rag-tag team of angels decide it's time to send a human champion to the Realm of Dreams to retrieve him... before The Powers That Be notice anything amiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All My Life

**Author's Note:**

> While this is vaguely set in Good Omens 'verse, and everyone's favorite duo makes a fleeting cameo, this is largely an OC story. It's written for an English class, it won't be very long, it hasn't been Brit-picked, and golly gee I just want to break in my spankin' new AO3 account.

 I've been training all my life for this day.

I was only a sapling when the messenger came to me, wreathed in blinding gold and pointing his pale, ink-stained finger at my heart.

“O thou fortunate child, who art called upon to take up the sword of thy Father.”

My parents fell to their knees and wept when I came to them with the words of prophets spilling from my lips. My father cursed Allah for taking his daughter, and not his son; my mother rocked back and forth with her hands on the Qur’an, and wept.

But neither dared defy the divine mandate.

From that day forward, my hands would taste the hilt of a blade from the bitter rays of morning to the balming glow of twilight. Eventually, I began to sleep with my sword against my chest, even under the domain of stars. My tiny, girlish body curled around it, filled with a silent purpose that lit my skin and hair with holy fire. I trained even while I fasted, spitting the battery acid from my mouth so as not to take in water while the sun was in the sky.

When I was thirteen, and began menstruation, the second message came.

“O bleeting kid, who goeth willing to the slaughter. Prepare thyself to shed all mortal comforts; prepare thyself to draw thy body's strength from sky and earth.”

My mother wept another torrent of tears as I filled my satchel with tools and left to live in the wild brush beyond our house. Every night, I would sleep there, and at first, I would return every day for meals. Then, once every other day. Once a week. Finally, I was able to feed myself on the land, and even brought my parents and brother food to eat. On that day, I was sixteen, and my father gave me the gift of my own Qur'an, wrapped in a weather-proof leather binding.

“You are my first-born son,” he said to me, and rested his heavy palm on my shoulder.

Beneath its weight, I soared, eleven feet tall.

More prophetic messages came to me then, although the style of their delivery declined with their increasing frequency. My family and I thought it very strange. The message that had first come booming from the mouth of a haloed angel now came written on decorative parchment in the rich, ribbon strokes of a quill; then, on resume paper with ball-point pen; and finally on postcards, printed with tourist locations like Stonehenge and San Francisco. The messages had taken on a distinctly different tone; one particular postcard merely read:

_P.S.: You may want to brush up on a bit of Norwegian. Just in case._

I was twenty-one years old when a colorful envelope arrived with a one-way ticket to London, England, and a street address scribbled on the back of old receipt paper. There were no other instructions, except a brief note beneath the address, advising me to accept water every time the flight attendant offered it, because the air can be “dreadfully dry on aeroplanes.”

I knew it was time.

My mother and brother spilled every last tear in their bodies when I said my farewells, but my heart had been polished to a smooth, cold stone by that time, weathered after a lifetime of preparation. My father understood; I could see that he did, from the hardness in his eyes. He merely nodded to me when I turned to take his hand, and for one powerful moment, our gazes met. No words were necessary beyond that. My father's love was a noble reflection of the fatherly love that binds us all.

I wasn't able to take most of my supplies through security, but I chose to trust that the holy guardians of my path would provide for me when I arrived in London. The aeroplane flight was long and stuffy, and a Game Boy kept firing loud clangs into the air from the lap of the pimpled Indian boy to my left. The character on the screen was firing large balls of fire into the belly of a badly pixilated dragon. I chose to read it as an omen.

By the time I touched down in Heathrow, I hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, but I climbed into a cab and proceeded to the address on the receipt-paper without delay. It is said that the body can eat and drink faith; I choose to believe that coffee is its invisible beverage of choice.

I wandered up and down the cobbled sidewalk once, twice, three times before I realized that there was no mistake. Even though the doorway wasn't marked, there lay only one entrance between 775 and 779: it had to be 777. Peering through the dark, dusty windows revealed shelves and shelves of peeling, colorless books, with faded gold lettering on the spines. I could only hope that this was not a wing of the somewhat more neon-painted  _Intimate Books_ next-door. Ignoring the  _Closed_ sign, I pushed through the gateway of my destiny, and into the scent of moth balls and pine cleaner.

My prophetic angel stands there, leaning against the old-fashioned till, with a sharply dressed gentleman in sunglasses to his right. Both their heads turn to me when I step over the threshold, and the familiar one smiles a large, slightly double-chinned smile, unconsciously sweeping his bright blonde curls back over his head before he lets his arms soar into a wide T. In his most cheerful English accent, he belts:

“Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!” Clearly rehearsed. “And mind the floor, dear; you don't want to step into the circle too early.”

I glance down, and notice now that there are strange markings on the floor. Dark brown lines sweep into a perfect, nine-pointed star, inside a massive circle, and at each point of the star there sits some curious object. On one spoke, a horned ram skull; on another, a toothbrush with slightly blood-flecked bristles. I take a moment to survey the scene before turning my gaze upon my divine guardians, and address them in a tone of firm respect.

“This is the portal that shall take me to my mission,” I say.

“Oh well  _done_ , it is indeed,” chirps the familiar angel. His dark-haired companion remains silent, regarding me with arms crossed from behind those midnight lenses. Behind their shields, I think I notice the slightest flicker of divine fire; a crimson glow that winks and disappears. The lenses must be in place to protect my fragile, mortal form.

“Once you've arrived on the other side-” the angel begins, but he doesn't get a chance to finish. Mozart's 25 th symphony blares throughout the room, and a terrible creaking noise wails from one of the tall shelves, shortly followed by the clatter of falling books and splintered wood as the whole thing tumbles over, crashing onto the portal. The last thing I see is the wide, panicked gaze of a freckled, chubby girl with tangled hair, who clings to the top of the bookshelf as it vaults her to the floor. A moment later there is a  _zap!_ , a bright flash of light, and then a thin trail of smoke as I stand alone in a dusty book-shop, facing an impotent summoning circle and a pile of tattered books.

 

–

 

I wasn't  _trying_ to get into trouble. I thought the shop was part of  _Intimate Books_ , and it seemed a spot easier to slip through with my Velcro sneakers and my Lisa Frank book-bag, since there was no one manning the counter.

Manning... manning... Isn't it weird that we say “manning”, but never “womanning”? Or woman anything, for that matter. Woman that station! Womanhandle that thief! Woman alive!

One too many syllables, I guess.

So, I was sneaking into the shop, trying not to make the floorboards creak, when I almost tripped over some kind of animal skull. It was startling by itself, but then I saw that it sat at the edge of one of those massive occult stars, just like you see in the movies. There were other things, too: locks of hair, some sort of gross thing in a jar, and even a toothbrush. The whole thing made my fingertips prickle like the low hum before a storm, so I nervously stepped around it and made my way to a corner shelf. All I really wanted was to bury my nose in a copy of  _Desperate Dutchess_ for a few minutes, until the shop-keep returned and I had to make some sort of excuse to bolt away.

Thing is, none of these books had titles like  _Desperate Dutchess._ They had titles like  _On betting thy wynning man in a jouste_ and  _Styling the papacy: the untolde story of dyvine fashun._ In short, I was fairly certain I'd accidentally wandered into the gay lit section.

Hey, there are worse things, aren't there?

I wedged my book-bag beneath the plated step-ladder and hauled myself up another shelf to get a good look. The books higher on the shelf had names like  _Inside the Vatican_ _Underground_ and  _Personal Accounts of Divine Visitation_ .  _So_ definitely gay. Splendid. I nudged a particularly weathered volume from its nook and spread it open in my hand, chewing on my lip as I perused the index for a juicy-sounding chapter. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to read it, because at that moment, loud voices crept in from the back room.

“Really, you could have just untied her,” said an English voice.

“It's not my fault she's too proud to beg for it,” said an American one.

Whoever had uttered  _that_ choice sentence was on his way to the front. Suddenly, my plan to play dumb and awkwardly eek back out seemed like no plan at all. I felt horribly exposed, standing at least a yard off the ground with a massive pornographic volume open in my hand, Velcro sneakers n' all. As I saw the beaded curtain shift, I was shot through with an overpowering panic—completely irrational, I know—and I did the only thing dumber than playing dumb: I grabbed the top of the bookshelf, tugged myself up, and just barely managed to knee my way into the cramped slot between the shelf and the ceiling before the voices entered the room.

I held my breath until I felt myself turning purple, and then I breathed jaggedly into my sleeve. I kept my head carefully tucked under my arm like an ostrich; I didn't dare look down at the room.

“Well, it's almost time!” sighed the English one. I could practically hear the tweed in his voice. “What do you think?”

“Hmf,” the American grunted. “I guess it'll do. For a one-way ticket.”

“You know, I  _did_ work rather hard on this. It wouldn't hurt you to say a kind thing now and  _then_ ,” puttered the Englishman.

“Beg to differ,” the American drawled.

You wouldn't think the two were on friendly terms just by listening to their words, but something in their tones gave me a funny feeling in my stomach, like the one you get when you're not sure if someone's saying what they actually mean or if they're surreptitiously insulting you.

“So!” the Englishman sang out. “Have you thought about what we're going to say to our little champion when she arrives?”

“Welcome to Soho, sssorry about your life?”

“-Because  _I've_ thought about it, quite a bit, and- Well, can I run something by you?”

“If only I had a choice.”

At this point, my curiosity was getting the better of me, and the duo seemed to be caught up in their own conversation. I dared myself to take a peek.

Believe it or not, the men below were caricatures of their own voices. The American looked especially terrifying, with his slick black hair combed back into a solid shell upon his head, and a pointed pair of rock star sunglasses that he was too cool to take off indoors. His suit was sharp, dark, and fitted, and his feet were clad in an oddly seamless pair of snake-skin boots. In fact, everything about the American, from the hair to the suit, was so seamlessly fitted that it looked as if he'd just zipped into it all, like a second skin.

The Englishman, meanwhile, was indeed wearing a tweet suit, complete with patches at the elbows and the sort of overly shapeless vest that's meant to disguise the extra padding of middle-age. His wheat blonde ringlets had grown to that awkward middle length where most men have the decency to get a shear, but this man had simply combed them back and allowed them to crowd beneath his ears. At the moment, a strand or two sprang free, as the Englishman threw his arms wide and trumpeted dramatically:

“Welcome to the first day of the  _rest_ of your life!” He quickly tucked his hair behind his ear and looked to his companion.  _These must be his books_ , I gathered. “What do you think?”

Expressionless, black sunglasses peered back at the tweed-clad man for many unreadable moments. Then:

“Pleassse. Don't say that. Don't actually say that.”

“But-”

“If you say that, I'm leaving. I'll have nothing more to do with this.”

“You don't mean that.”

“I do. I'll take the Bentley down to Lota's and get my nails done.”

“But you're the only one who can touch the sword!”

“Not my problem, angel. I'm not even sssupposed to be here.”

Between the way the American seemed to lisp—er, hiss—his Ss, and the Englishman's overplayed demeanor, I'm surprised it took me so long to figure out the two were a couple.

“Alright, alright—how about this?” The Englishman cleared his throat again, and closed his eyes in intense concentration before they opened on a bright smile and he threw his arms out in the same dramatic manner. “ _Welcome_ to the-  _apex_ of your life!”

“Now you're just scaring the poor girl. Can't you just say welcome?”

“But it's got to have some sort of  _flare_ ! This isn't any ordinary trip for her, now is it?”

The American sighed deeply. “Why don't you say... Welcome, honored guessst?”

“Are you sure that's enough?”

“That's  _more_ than enough, angel.”

“Well I don't really-” Just then, the chimes on the door-handle began to sing, and the Englishman let out an emphatic, “Oh!” The back of his hand almost hit the American in the face as he threw his arms out once more and belted triumphantly, “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!”

I could see the American's forehead sinking into his hand.

“And mind the floor, dear; you don't want to step into the circle too early,” the Englishman added quickly.

The girl who had just walked in the door looked like something out of a superhero comic. All the hard edges of her frame—face, shoulders, knees, and back—were set with stoic pride. Her head-dress was wrapped with military precision, not a hair to be seen. She was wicked fit. If we'd been objects in a fridge, she'd've been a bushel of celery and I'd've been a tub of butter. She even sounded heroic when she spoke, her voice all smooth and dark like her skin.

“This is the portal that shall take me to my mission.”

“Oh well  _done_ , it is indeed!” The Englishman clapped his hands together and beamed raw sunshine at his boyfriend. I was starting to see the reason for the sunglasses. “Once you've arrived on the other side-”

A wild torrent of violins burst forth from beneath the step-ladder.

_Shit_ , I thought.

My mobile.

I was so startled by the traitorous melody that I jerked forward, as if I could reach down from the top of the shelf and turn it off. Instead, I managed to jerk the shelf with me, and after a terrifying instant of splintered, creaking wood, the shelf began to lean. And lean. Until all the books were tumbling out, and I was tumbling down with them, clutching onto my perch like a cat in a falling tree. My stomach flew into my throat as I neared the floor, and the last thing I saw was the wide, affronted gaze of the Muslim heroine, before everything went black and I landed on the ground.

I mean that literally, by the way. _In_ that order.

Everything went black—absolutely everything—and then I landed on a spot of light, which was shining eerily in the midst of an endless nothingness. The book shop was nowhere to be seen.


	2. Into the Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The angels debate what to do with their unexpected visitor.

 

Flat on my belly, I find myself staring at the wrinkled trouser hem of a gray suit. The stench of old tobacco reeks from it, and as I follow the bow-legged lines to their owner, I find that I can't quite crank my neck back far enough to get a look at his face. I sit back on my haunches and rub the heels of my hands, moaning weakly. The man in the gray suit must be over seven feet tall, and he wears a matching fedora on his head with a small orange feather. His face is so leathered that it looks like a cheap Halloween mask. There's a cigarette between his nicotine-gilded fingers.

Shivering, I watch him raise that cigarette to his parchment lips and draw half the stick to ash in a single puff, while his squinting eyes stare me down. When he exhales, the smoke seems to creep not just from his mouth, but from his eyes, his ears—even his pores. It engulfs him momentarily, and then he hacks, spits, and roars:

“What the devil is  _this_ ?”

Chaos ensues.

The shop-keepers appear at once, with the Englishman bubbling apologies. The smoking man chain-lights at least three cigarettes while the poor fellow babbles on, before grabbing him by his tweed lapels and threatening to put his eye out with the lit end of his fag. The American starts hissing something about how they'll all be found out if they start wasting bodies over this, the Englishman makes a string of distressed penguin noises, and just when I'm sure the whole scene will turn violent, a fourth fella appears, wearing a black vinyl apron.

“Sorry I'm late,” he lisps, as he unties his apron. “I had to do extentions. Oh!”

The newcomer is young, slim, and colorfully dressed. I notice that he wears a bit of eyeliner, and a clear shade of lip-gloss. His shirt seems to have come from the factory with the top two buttons missing, and I'm fairly sure he bought all ten of his rings from a gumball machine.

There's also a bright halo of light surrounding his bleach-blonde hair.

“Oh now  _this_ is not a pretty picture,” he says, motioning to the other three with a twirl of his index finger.

“These two idiots ported the wrong girl,” the smoking man growls. “Do you have  _any_ idea how long it took us to set this up?!” He's got one idiot in each hand now, and gives them both a mighty shake.

The American's sunglasses slip down his nose a ways, and- I blink. Once, twice. Are those cat eyes?

The hairdresser gently curls his sparkling hands over the smoking man's forearms. He has to tilt his head back to speak to him.

“Now now, there there,” he coos. “What's done is done—not going to make the situation any better by tearing out each others hair, now are we?”

The smoking man purses his lips, causing a bit of ash to fall from the cigarette that's wedged between them. Thin wisps of smoke are still rising from his eyes.

“Fine,” he grunts, and releases his grip on the shop-keepers.

The Englishman pushes the American's sunglasses back up his nose, and the American tries to brush some ash off his suit as unaffectedly as possible before he straightens the Englishman's bowtie. The hairdresser wrings his hands, and the smoking man lights another cigarette. Everyone sort of awkwardly collects themselves for a moment.

Perhaps detecting that he's the only one brash enough to break the silence in a room—er, void—full of Britishers, the American asks:

“So, what do we do then? Send her back?”

I realize he's talking about me. I'd almost forgotten I was here.

“Nonsense. We have to send her  _in_ , now. We have no other choice.” The smoking man.

“Isn't that a little dangerous?” The Englishman, looking like he desperately needs to worry his sleeves. “She hasn't been trained; she might not make it past the door. No offense, darling.”

Instinctively polite, and quite surprised to be addressed, I simply shake my head and mouth “oh no” as if it were no problem.

“Oh, don't frighten the wee thing. Maybe we just stick her feet in the door so she can set off the first orb. And then the first orb can set off the second orb, and...”

“Twelve hours, though? Would that be enough?”

“Why not ussse her as bait?”

“Honestly! What will that accomplish!”

“Umm...” It takes me a moment to realize that my own vocal chords have made the sound. Every head in the void has flown toward me, and I suddenly find myself stared down by two pairs of kind blue eyes, one pair of smoking ones, and one pair of sunglasses. All waiting for me to say something. “Where am I?”

“Oh God,” the Englishman simpers, and has a partial faint into an invisible chair. “She had to be Welsh.”

“Don't despair quite yet,” laughs the hairdresser, optimistic but faintly nervous. “At least she's one of the faithful, right? Aren't you, girl.”

“Yes!” the tweed angel's head lifts hopefully, and he smiles at me in a way that makes my stomach feel rather guilty. “What _do_ you believe, young child?”

What do I believe...?

_I believe it's unfair that I'm still wearing a training bra in secondary school_ , I think, but I know better than to say that. I want to sound smart. After nodding thoughtfully for many moments (the Englishman nods along with me), I say, “Well... I guess I believe in a little bit of everything. Like, there are parts of all religions that are good and worth keeping. I guess I'd think of myself as kind of part Buddhist, part Christian, part... bunch of other stuff.”

The snake-skin boots turns his gaze on his companions and grins. I can see the slight wink of a fang in his smile. “Well,” he says, “You're fucked.”

The Englishman puts his head between his legs.

“Now now, there's nothing in the rules that says an agnostic can't be a heavenly mercenary...” the hair-dresser says, though he doesn't sound as if he believes his own reassurances anymore.

“Bollocks to that,” the smoking man cuts in. “You wouldn't consider converting to  _one_ of the Abrahamic religions before you go in? Not Judaism,” he adds quickly. “Takes too long.”

“Errr... Go in where, exactly?” I ask.

“To the realmmm of dreammms,” the smoking man breathes out, and the wreathes of smoke that spiral from his pores seem to twist and twirl in a particularly mystical manner.

“Oh,” I say.

“This might require some explaining,” the hair-dresser says. “Take a seat. Don't worry, I'll imagine a chair for you.”

“Oh, er- thanks,” I say, cautiously folding my knees and lowering myself against thin air until, right enough, I feel resistance. Huh.

I'm sitting in an imaginary chair.

...Cool.

“About four-hundred years ago,” the smoking man growls, “the angel Morpheus failed to appear for a quarterly council of the angels.”

“Office party,” the hair-dresser clarifies.

“Shortly after his _notable_ absence, it became evident that Morpheus was no longer performing his duties. A wave of chaos swept the continents.”

“He means the Enlightenment,” the American snorts.

“Not just that! People were getting all _sorts_ of ideas in their heads! It was simply unprecedented! Angels could hardly keep up, fallen or otherwise.”

“Topical, let's stay topical,” the Englishman claps.

“Several attempts were made to communicate with the angel, but while locked in the Realm of Dreams, he was simply beyond the reach of our incantations.”

“Morpheus is one of the few angels to be granted his own domain,” the hair-dresser explains. “Once in a rare while, the Highest Power will carve one out. Like Hell—you've heard about Hell, haven't you?”

I'm proud to admit that I have.

“There's also a Realm of Involuntaries, though that's mostly in disuse now. After a new arrangement made in the fifth century A.D., Involuntaries just go straight to the first circle of Hell. You'll still occasionally catch a pair of wayward snoggers in there, though.”

“What's an Involuntary?” I ask, blinking.

“Well no one _asked_ to be given the Gift of Life, now did they?” the Englishman says. “In accordance with Free Will, there has to exist an option to refuse.”

“Ah.”

There is a very long silence in which I wait for the exposition to continue, but everyone suddenly seems to be staring thoughtfully into the distance at something. The smoking man is unconsciously chewing on his cigarette, gobbling it in until his spit grows thick with ash and stains his teeth. He doesn't seem to notice.

I clear my throat.

“So... the angel of dreams is missing?” I ask, for clarification.

“You've got it,” the smoking man rasps out.

“But I still... _dream_ ,” I say. I can feel the confusion playing wildly on my face.

“Yes, yes, but your dreams don't make any  _sense_ , now do they? Honestly, do you think dreams were  _always_ like this? Haven't you ever read the Bible?” the Englishman lectures. “Seven stalks of grain for seven seasons of rich harvest; seven starving cattle for seven seasons of famine—that sort of thing. Dreams  _used_ to elegant. They're supposed to be. But then somewhere along the line, Morpheus stopped doing his job, and now all the images and sounds and sensations of dreams are just jumbled up into one big heap of nonsense.  _Surely_ it must have occurred to you that something was a little off.”

I think back on last night's dream, and Matt Smith's brief but unforgettable appearance in lady's lingerie. I  _am_ sometimes disappointed that my dreams are not more prophetic.

“I guess,” I say. Then, my brow knits up, while a thought at the back of the classroom of my mind nearly jerks its arm out of its socket to get my attention. "I thought Morpheus was a god?"

The Englishman looks affronted—he's very expressive, for an Englishman—but quickly recovers and explains gently that, "A lot of things topsy-turvy back when that was written."

"Are you... are you angels, too?" I look between them all, and they look between each other.

"Yes, we are," the Englishman says brightly. "Although he's-... well-..."

"Not officially here," the American sneers.

"Right."

“There's no way to know what's gone wrong,” the smoking man continues. “Morpheus  _could_ just be taking an extended nap. He could be trapped. Really, the only way to be sure of anything is to send someone in there to check.”

"Well why does it have to be a human person? You're angels; you're all-powerful. Why don't you go in and get Morpheus yourself?"

"Because it has to be a dreamer, duh," says the hair-dresser. "You can't enter the realm of dreams otherwise."

"Angels don't dream," the Englishman supplies helpfully.

"Oh," I say. I don't say much else, because I suppose it's finally hitting me that I'm actually going to do this. That I'm going on a mission to the Realm of Dreams to retrieve an MIA angel at the command of a halo-sporting hairdresser, a walking anti-smoking ad, a tweed-wearing angel, and an American in snake-skin boots that I'm not entirely sure are boots at all.

Something else is nagging at me. What could it be?

“Wait,” I say. “Why don't you just ask God to fix it for you? I'm sure _He_ doesn't need any special qualifiers to go where He likes. It would be as simple as saying please.”

The angels suddenly look very nervous. I feel my imaginary chair wavering a bit beneath me, and quickly stand up.

“There's no need for that,” the smoking man coughs.

“Yes, He's- a very important entity. No need to bother Him with trivialities,” the hair-dresser adds.

“In fact, if you can, try not to pray about this at all. Shouldn't be hard for you. No way to know if He actually listens, but- well, better be safe than sorry,” the Englishman smiles.

I'm starting to feel distinctly uneasy about this. Then again, who am I kidding—any pretense of ease I had disappeared the moment I fell through the floor of an adult bookshop and landed in another dimension.

“So we're all in favor of sending this girl in?” the smoking man asks, squinting at his companions for confirmation.

“Fine,” says tweed.

“Agreed,” chirps bleach-blonde.

“As long as we get a move on,” says snake-skin.

“Then it's the decided,” growls feather fedora. “Oh,” he adds, as it finally occurs to him. He turns his smokey, smoking eyes on me, and asks in a gravely cough, “Do you consent to do the Lord's work, my child?”

“Errrrr...” I barely manage to stammer out a sound of assent. “S-sure.”

“Not technically the Lord's work,” the American mumbles, but the Englishman quickly elbows his side.

“Think of it like billing repairs to petty cash,” he murmurs.

"May as well gear her up," says the Smoking Man.

The American sighs woefully. "Do you even know how to use one of these?" he asks, and I have to blink several times, because I suddenly realize that there is a sword in his hands, long and slim and so glossy that it seems to glow a faint blue. I can almost hear it humming in his grip, like the fading vibrations of a wind chime, just before it slips beyond the ear.

"I..." I begin awkwardly, then righten my back. If I'm going to do this, I decide, I am damn well going to present myself with some basic level of competence. This is a divine mission, after all. I bet John the Baptist didn't snivel and stutter when _he_ received _his_ holy commission. "I think I understand the basics, yes."

 _Swing it at bad guys_ , I think.

"Good," he says, and sheaths the blade in some sort of black velvet casing, before handing it over to me. I take it with some trepidation; I've never held a sword before. It's much heavier than I imagined.

I slip the strap over my shoulder, and try to sound firm. "Anything else?"

"Just these," says the hairdresser, holding his breath as he carries a bundle of cloth to the center of the light. From the bulges in the cloth it looks like... eggs? No—glass spheres, I see, as he gently sets the bundle on the ground and unwraps its contents with reverent care. Each sphere is so delicate, so transparent, that I can only see their edges when they rest against each other; they're clearer than bubbles, and faint as air. There is only the faintest distortion inside their borders. If I hadn't seen their shapes pressed against the fabric, I'm not sure I could have made them out at all.

"It has cost us very dearly to procure these," says the smoking man. "Very dearly." From the somber downturn in his tone, I wonder if some of that sacrifice isn't personal. I feel the tightness of guilt in my stomach; I'm reminded that no one wants to entrust me with these things. I'm not even supposed to be here. Some classically trained heroine is.

"Sara would have known exactly how to use these," the Englishman sighs. "You'll just have to memorize quickly."

"Each orb is good for a four-hour trip from the Lake of Forgetfulness," says the smoking man.

"It brings back the dead," the hair-stylist clarifies.

"Your champions will come to you, bound with a purpose," the smoking man continues. "Similar to the summoning rites that binds a fallen angel to the granting of favors."

"I hate those," the American mumbles.

"Should have thought of that," the Englishman murmurs good-naturedly.

"You won't have to give your selections any thought," assures the smoking man. "We've already spent one-hundred-and-fifty years deciding on the perfect champions."

"I didn't get a vote," the American tells me, clearly a little petulant. "I wanted to bring in Houdini. Or Evel Knievel. If you're going to get out of a spot of danger, why not call in the professionals?"

"You're to summon _only those names we give you_ ," the smoking man growls over the snake boots' complaints, while the hair-stylist huffily points out that the American should be happy he got a _say_ in it all, even if he didn't get a vote. "It's important that you have some basic notion of the individuals in mind, or the simple uttering of a name won't have any effect. So listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you."

I nod gravely.


End file.
